A chimpanzee is not a monkey. A chimpanzee is a “great ape” like a gorilla, or like we humans. Chimpanzees are our closet relatives in the animal family. If I remember correctly, and adult chimp has roughly the intelligence of a five year old human. They feel pain exactly as we do. So it is hard to understand how such thinking and feeling beings can be used for scientific experiments in any but the most drastic situations.
The following article talks about a chimp named Lennie. Lennie was born in Africa in 1962. He was taken to the United States where he spent forty years as a lab animal. Lennie had a 540 page medical file detailing his life time of being poked and prodded. Lennie had four spinal taps, one bone marrow biopsy, and a lifetime of blood work. Every drawing of blood was preceded by a “knockdown” by an anesthetizing dart. Eventually, Lennie died after intentionally being injected with the HIV virus. It turned out the HIV work on chimps did not transfer to humans.
Several nations have stated they will only use chimps as a last resort in scientific experiments. It is time for the United States to join them.